Carving Ivory Grips for Colt 1911

Eagles seemed appropriate

I recently carved eagles onto the grips of a Colt 1911 for my client. The first step was laying down the design using graphite. As I've often said, one of the most important tools I have is a pencil!

Sometimes you just don't have the right tool, though, so you have to make do with what you have. And if you can’t make do, then you make. I ended up making a special tool to cut the border around the screw holes on the grips.

The next step was to waste the background. Since the grips didn’t have too much thickness to begin with, I had to do a fairly shallow base relief carving. For this kind of project I prefer hand tools because of the greater control, even though it takes longer than power tools. I then cut in the wing feathers and the body feathers.

Thanks for watching and for being part of the Original Tribe!